Brussels, February 1 (RHC)-- More than 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees have vanished following their arrival in Europe and may have fallen into the hands of organized trafficking gangs, EU’s criminal intelligence agency says.

Europol Chief of Staff Brian Donald warned in a Saturday interview with UK-based daily Observer that a sophisticated pan-European “criminal infrastructure” was now targeting refugees, adding that 5,000 of the missing children had disappeared in Italy alone with 1,000 more unaccounted for in Sweden.

“It’s not unreasonable to say that we’re looking at 10,000-plus children,” Donald stated. “Not all of them will be criminally exploited; some might have been passed on to family members. We just don’t know where they are, what they’re doing or whom they are with.”

He said the minors went missing after registering with state authorities, noting that the discovery came to light in the first attempt by European law enforcement agencies to keep track of one of the most disturbing aspects of the continent’s refugee crisis.